“Thirty or forty millions,” she replied; “but then, you see, a lot of
it’s in the inner companies of his railroad system, and it pays him
fabulously. And his wife has money, too—she was a Miss Mason, you know,
her father’s one of the steel crowd. We’ve a saying that there are
millionaires, and then multi-millionaires, and then Pittsburg
millionaires. Anyhow, the two of them spend all their income in
entertaining. It’s Robbie’s fad to play the perfect host—he likes to
have lots of people round him. He does put up good times—only he’s so
very important about it, and he has so many ideas of what is proper! I
guess most of his set would rather go to Mrs. Jack Warden’s any day;
I’d be there to-night, if it hadn’t been for Ollie.”
“Who’s Mrs. Jack Warden?” asked Montague.
“Haven’t you ever heard of her?” said Betty. “She used to be Mrs. van
Ambridge, and then she got a divorce and married Warden, the big lumber
man. She used to give ‘boy and girl’ parties, in the English fashion;
and when we went there we’d do as we please—play tag all over the
house, and have pillow-fights, and ransack the closets and get up
masquerades! Mrs. Warden’s as good-natured as an old cow. You’ll meet
her sometime—only don’t you let her fool you with those soft eyes of
hers. You’ll find she doesn’t mean it; it’s just that she likes to have
handsome men hanging round her.”
At one o’clock a few of Robbie’s guests went to bed, Montague among
them. He left two tables of bridge fiends sitting immobile, the women
with flushed faces and feverish hands, and the men with cigarettes
dangling from their lips. There were trays and decanters beside each
card-table; and in the hall he passed three youths staggering about in
each other’s arms and feebly singing snatches of “coon songs.” Ollie
and Betty had strolled away together to parts unknown.
Montague had entered his name in the order-book to be called at nine
o’clock. The man who awakened him brought him coffee and cream upon a
silver tray, and asked him if he would have anything stronger. He was
privileged to have his breakfast in his room, if he wished; but he went
downstairs, trying his best to feel natural in his elaborate hunting
costume. No one else had appeared yet, but he found the traces of last
night cleared away, and breakfast ready—served in English fashion, with
urns of tea and coffee upon the buffet. The grave butler and his
satellites were in attendance, ready to take his order for anything
else under the sun that he fancied.
Montague preferred to go for a stroll upon the terrace, and to watch
the sunlight sparkling upon the sea. The morning was
beautiful—everything about the place was so beautiful that he wondered
how men and women could live here and not feel the spell of it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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